WSPN was the SOLE high school nominee of all categories.
WSPN had been nominated among the best from nearly 10,000 entries.
In the Student category, WSPN had been competing with college organizations and journalism schools around the globe.

NEW YORK, NY – The global Web community has voted WSPN as Best Student Site of the year in the Webby People’s Voice Awards.

This year, over 500,000 votes were cast by people around the world for their favorite sites, videos, and ads in The Webby People’s Voice Awards. A list of both Webby Awards and People’s Voice Awards winners can be found here.

WSPN will be honored at a star-studded ceremony hosted by Saturday Night Live’s Seth Meyers on June 8th in New York City. On June 9th, fans will be able to watch the ceremony, including WSPN’s five-word speech, at the official Webby Awards YouTube Channel.

WSPN is an award-winning online high school publication that uploads diverse types of content first and only on the Web, focusing on visual communication and interaction with the viewers.

Hailed as the “Internet’s highest honor” by The New York Times, The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet, including websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile websites.

The Webby Awards is presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 650-person judging academy whose members include Internet co-inventor Vint Cerf, R/GA’s Chief Bob Greenberg, “Simpson’s” creator Matt Groening, Arianna Huffington and Harvey Weinstein.

“The Webby Awards honors the very best of the Internet,” said David-Michel Davies, executive director of The Webby Awards. “WSPN’s win is a testament to the skill, ingenuity, and vision of its creators.”

The 13th Annual Webby Awards received nearly 10,000 entries from over 60 countries and all 50 states.

Founded in 1996, The Webby Awards are known worldwide for its famous five-word speech limit. Past Webby Award winners–and their speeches–include Al Gore (Please don’t recount this vote), Beastie Boys (Can anyone fix my computer?), and Stephen Colbert (Me. Me. Me. Me. Me.).

  “Winners like WSPN are setting the standard for innovation and creativity on the Internet,” said David-Michel Davies, executive director of the Webby Awards.

  “It is an incredible achievement to be selected among the best from the nearly 10,000 entries we received this year,” said Davies.

NECN (Channel 6) 9:30 PM  /  Prime Time Cover Story – 5/5/09
New England Channel’s coverage of WSPN winning the Webby

This Year’s Student Category Nominees

Alphabetical Order
Business of Detention – Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism
butv10: TerrierVision – Boston University College of Communication
Cape Fear to Down Here – University of North Carolina
Mission Loc@l – UC Berkeley Journalism School
Wayland Student Press Network – Wayland High School

This Year’s Student Category Official Honorees

Alphabetical Order
EMO-Emotional Memory Organizer – Academy of Art University
Liteart – Berghs School of Communication
At the Crossroads of Hate and Hope – Cronkite School of Journalism
The Columbia Chronicle Online – Columbia College Chicago
The Desk of One Astronomer – California state University, Los Angeles
The Kitchen Wall – University of Kent

High Profile Nominees / Winners

The Webby Awards is a high profile contest.
This year’s website nominees in other categories include: NYTimes.com; Wired.com; NewYorker.com; Digg.com; HuffingtonPost.com; CNN.com/video; Flickr.com; NASA.gov; About.com; TheOnion.com; BBC.com/news; ESPN.com.

Recognition by the Webby Award puts you in the esteemed group of industry leaders such as Amazon.com, eBay, Yahoo!, iTunes, Google, FedEx, BBC News, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, NPR, Salon Magazine, Facebook, Meetup, Wikipedia, Flickr, ESPN, Comedy Central, PBS, The Onion News Network, and The Office Webisodes.

This Year’s Winners of Different Industries / Categories

About The Judging Panel

Judging panel of the 13th Annual Webby Awards for WEBSITES consisted of 439 industry leaders. Below is a selected list of those judges:

Former Secretary of Education, Lamar Alexander
CBS News / Serena Altschul, Journalist
BusinessWeek Magazine / Spencer E. Ante, Department Editor
Harvard Business School / Lynda Applegate, Professor
Mozilla / Mitchell Baker, CEO and Chair
Yahoo! Inc. / Christopher Barr, Senior Editorial Director
PayPal / Kimberly Blessing, Web Development Platform Team Manager
United States Senator, Barbara Boxer
MySpace / Josh Brooks, VP Marketing and Content
UC Berkeley / John Canny, Professor
BitTorrent / Bram Cohen, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist
Walt Disney Studios / Richard Dean, Director of Digital Media
Apple Inc. / Alan Eyzaguirre, Senior Product Line Manager
Flickr / Caterina Fake, Co-founder
Los Angeles Times / Maggie Farley, United Nations Bureau Chief
Stanford University / B.J. Fogg, Ph.D., Director, Persuasive Technology Lab
Apple Inc. / Brian Frick, Human Interface Designer
Joost, Skype / Janus Friis, Co-Founder
Real Networks / Rob Glaser, CEO
Ben & Jerry’s / Jerry Greenfield, Co-Founder
Merrill Lynch / Laurie Hosie, VP
Fox Interactive Media / Peter Levinsohn, President
The Onion / Sean Mills, President
Harvard Business School / Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Professor
CondeNet / Jamie Pallot, Editorial Director
MTV News / Joseph Patel, Producer
CNNMoney.com / Chris Peacock, Editor
CBS Interactive / Steven Pearson, VP Advanced Technologies
Cisco / Cordell Ratzlaff, Director
Wired / Drew Schutte, Publishing Director
MIT Press / Doug Sery, Editor
Forbes Magazine / Dirk Smillie, Senior Reporter and Media Critic
CNBC.com / Meredith Stark, Vice President
Time Inc. / Cyndi Stivers, Media Consultant
MIT Initiative on Technology and Self / Sherry Turkle, Director
Harvard Business School / Judith Uhl, Chief Learning Officer and VP
JP Morgan Chase / Chip Weldon, Internet Design Executive
Google / Karen Wickre, Marketing Writer
Wall Street Journal / Nick Wingfield, Reporter
Joost, Skype / Niklas Zennstrom, Co-Founder

About The Webby Awards

Hailed as the “Internet’s highest honor” by the New York Times, The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet, including Websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile web sites. Established in 1996, the 13th Annual Webby Awards received over 10,000 entries from all 50 states and over 60 countries worldwide.

The Webby Awards is presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Sponsors and Partners of The Webby Awards include: YouTube; Microsoft Silverlight; The Creative Group; .ORG; Getty Images; The Barbarian Group; Digital Kitchen; Wired; IDG; PricewaterhouseCoopers; 2advanced.Net; KobeMail and Museum of the Moving Image.  [Source: The Webby Awards]

Press Coverage of The 13th Annual Webby Awards

Press Releases from The Webby Awards

Contact WSPN

WSPN  |  Tel. 508-785-5541  |  contact@wspn.thinkrobin.com
http://wspn.thinkrobin.com

Redefining High School
Journalism

Wayland Student Press Network (WSPN) is the online student media network of Wayland High School. Its five main divisions spotlight student journalism through news articles, commentaries, videos, photo galleries, magazine posts, and blog posts. Content of WSPN has always been published first and exclusively on the Web, focusing on visual communication and interaction with the viewers.

Founded in 2007 with the purpose of raising awareness of school activities and connecting different parts of the community in a central location, WSPN has reached its initial goals and is continuing to serve the Wayland High School community as a binding force.

Wayland Student Press, part of WSPN, is the winner of a National Pacemaker Award, which is given to top high school and college publications in the nation. After winning the award in its first year, WSPN has continued to garner attention from various media specialists and attain awards from different press associations.

Due to its success, WSPN has been able to bring a new journalism course to Wayland High School for the year 2008-2009. Currently, WSPN staff members include journalism students as well as many others from the school community who serve as the leading force of an open, student-run media organization. As of March 2009, sixty percent of the staff consists of students outside of the journalism class.

WSPN uses innovative and unconventional ways to maximize its presence in the high school community. Its website serves as the homepage of all computers on campus, and WSPN has installed a 52″ display in the Commons area for public viewing of its site. Any student can navigate through the network website using a computer kiosk connected to the display.

We also embrace the power of humor, the popularity of multimedia content, and the effectiveness of Web tools (e.g. weekly e-mail newsletter, Twitter) to make a lasting impact among the students and beyond, reaching countless parents, teachers, administrators, and other visitors.

Staff members of WSPN update the website every day, resulting in more than 2,000 pageviews from the Wayland community each school day. In addition to these visits, WSPN gets many more hits from across the nation and around the world.

WSPN uses Wordpress, an open source publishing application, as its website’s content management system. We do not use any templates made by others; every aspect of WSPN originates with the students.

Wayland High School is a public school with approximately 900 students, located in Wayland, Massachusetts, about 30 minutes from Boston.

2009 & WSPN
Preparing for the Web Generation

In 2009, major print publications are collapsing and online media are thriving. Many conventional newspapers are struggling to present their content in a way that Internet viewers embrace. In contrast, Wayland Student Press Network (WSPN), a new Web-based high school publication, is preparing for the next generation of students who were born when the Internet was already a household word.

While taking advantage of today’s Web 2.0 technologies, we are regarding multimedia content as important as textual content, along with using humor and human interest connection to appeal to a broader range of students. One of our goals is to encourage other high school newspapers to be Web-based, dynamic and interactive, producing Web-friendly content such as short video clips, photo slideshows, blog posts, news snippets, and much more.

WSPN is an award-winning online high school publication that uploads diverse types of content first and only on the Web. Please explore our online network to see how we intend to popularize the medium with the Web generation.